ISO 20022 and XBRL role in unifying the financial communication

ISO 20022 - UNIversal Financial Industry Message scheme (UNIFI) is the international standard that defines the ISO platform for the development of financial message standards. Its business modelling approach allows users and developers to represent financial business processes and underlying transactions in a formal but syntax-independent notation. These business transaction models are the “real” business standards. They can be converted into physical messages in the desired syntax. At the time UNIFI was developed, XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) was already the preferred syntax for e-communication. Therefore, the first edition of UNIFI proposes a standardized XML-based syntax for messages. The standard was developed within the Technical Committee TC68 – Financial Services of ISO - the International Organization for Standardization.

Mostly financial institutions that want to streamline their communication infrastructure and associated costs by opting for a single, common “language” for all financial communications, whatever the business domain, the communication network and the counterparty (other financial institutions, clients, suppliers and market infrastructures). UNIFI is targeted at these standards initiatives that are generally driven by communities of users looking for more cost-effective and XML-based communications to support specific financial business processes with a particular view of facilitating interoperability with other existing protocols (e.g., MDDL, FIXML, RIXML, XBRL, FpML, IFX, TWIST, SWIFT, RosettaNet, OAGi, ACORD, ISTH, OMG).

Here is the simple comparison between each standard

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